I
am so appreciative of the notice in the 6 April 1959
issue of the ASA Newsletter of the storm created by
Dr. A. J. Bernatowicz of Hawaii concerning teleological expressions and anthropomorphic modes of
thought. I will confine my remarks here to a few
words, since this sort of thing could generate a thesis.

Personally, I am amused at Bernatowicz' paper and
take it rather lightly, but did not do so at first reading.
I do not know Bernatowicz personally but have had
pleasant correspondence with him, as his specialty is
also mine. I believe that his ability to generate a controversy was faithfully implanted during his predoctoral days. We both studied at the same institution
and under the same man, and I know what the tftining was like. It was certainly "rigorous", to say the
least.

The article was very well taken as far as his thesis
was concerned, however, I thought I detected a vindictiveness in his tone that belied a mere passing interest or concern in the usage of "evil" terms by
scientists. Could Bernatowicz have been using the article
to attack any Divine explanation of origin that any
scientist might hold in his mind,

For a Christian who is also a scientist the use of
teleology, whether this be in the usage of expressions
or as the motivation for a line of reasoning, should
certainly be eliminated in his research program for if used it could definitely cloud and render inoperative
the desired mechanistic causes and effects which a
good basic research program should reveal. However,
in contrast to many secular colleagues of mine, I hold
that a man is not a scientist in the laboratory and then
a theologian in the church, the two natures being
widely separated. A man is a whole and to separate
him would be to create a mutant sport. Therefore, it
would be nothing short of impossible to completely
separate teleological thinking from man's basic inner
drives and motivations . According to the Bible man
was created in the image of God, both regenerate and
unregenerate man, and to attempt to make ourselves comipletely mechanistic would be to utterly frustrate
our inner innate motivations, whose tendencies would
be to recognize our complete helplessness in "pulling
ourselves up by the bootstraps". This is no excuse
to place our scientific language and research programs
under a teleological approach, but as Bernatowicz expressed, a more rigorous examination of our scientific
attitudes is necessary.

I want to add, however, that I doubt that Dr. Bernatowicz would enter a classroom to teach a course just
full of facts and hard meat, unless he first outlined a
purposeful design and plan to hang the fact on. His
course would then proceed in an orderly and "teleological" manner. To do otherwise would be complete
f olly.

Finally, I am surprised that Science would devote
space in their publication to this type of article. It
seems to me that an article of research value of comparable space would be of more value, even if such
article were to have a few inadvertent "slips of evil".
It is just as evil, in my way of thinking, to harbor intolerance for one's fellow worker's nonrigorous shortcomings as it is for a very nonrigorous fellow to remain careless in the "evil" of nonrigorous sins. Who
becomes the greater offender? It is well that science
has good watchdogs, but perhaps the attitude becomes
one similar to that of the late John L. Lewis, "I'll give
the world 24 hours to get out".